The End Of The GOP

It seems that the Grand Old Party is intent on committing suicide — no matter how hard conservative Americans or Tea Party Patriots try to turn the party around, the politicians in power just put on their blinders and press on, taking the party in a direction that will only turn people away.: In an arena where it seems that not a day goes by without a new announcement in the media of yet another scandal brought on by government overreach, the time should be ripe to push for smaller government, yet Congressional Republicans seem to have little desire to use any of this momentum to further their cause.

In some respects, Republicans in power seem to be biding their time, hoping against hope that the Obama administration’s never-ending list of scandals will propel them into enough Senate seats in the 2014 elections that they will have a better chance at passing legislation to do things like rolling back Obamacare, reforming the tax code, or restricting the power of the EPA.: The problem is, in the meantime, several members of the GOP seem intent on shooting their party in the foot, apparently using President Obama’s declining popularity and the apparent momentum of the conservative movement to pass an immigration bill that is both tremendously unpopular, and not in the Republican Party’s best interests.

One interesting thing to note about Marco Rubio, the Republican Senator who has basically sold out all of his conservative credibility in this immigration reform push: not that long ago, leftists said that his career was over when he took a rather awkward drink from a bottle of water while delivering the GOP response to President Obama’s 2013 State of the Union speech.: Republicans scoffed — why, after all, would a drink of water end someone’s political career…especially when the Democrats had long standing politicians like Ted Kennedy (Chappaquiddick), Robert Byrd (former Klansman), and Bill Clinton (intern, Oval Office, perjury) whose political careers extended far beyond their respective scandals.

I don’t know what the Democrats slipped into that bottle of water when Rubio wasn’t looking, but whatever it was, it seems to have worked.

We still don’t know what the Gang of 8’s immigration boondoggle is going to look like by the time it is finished, but no matter what, it is virtually guaranteed to be a disaster.: Conservative Republicans learned long ago learned to have a deep, abiding mistrust for any politician who joined one of these “gangs,” if only because they tend to generate legislation that is bad for America.

It’s really rather sad to see someone who was the GOP’s Golden Boy not that long ago face such a swift fall from grace, to where he is now not only involved in a piece of legislation that will be bad for America and for the Republican Party, but he is also employing typical dirty Washington tactics to push the bill — saying one thing in English, and then appearing on Spanish-language TV saying something completely different.

While Rubio is one big example of the GOP’s politician-assisted suicide, there are plenty of others.: John Boehner hasn’t been in the news much lately, but he and several other Republicans have gone on the record defending the NSA’s snooping into Americans’ phone and online activity.

Add all of this together, and you have a major political party squandering a massive opportunity to use a huge shift in political momentum to further their agenda in an atmosphere where they would otherwise be stuck.: President Obama is losing huge amounts of credibility and political capital on a daily basis, and, by extension, so is the Democratic Party as a whole.: It’s almost painful watching Republicans be too stupid to use this unique situation to further the conservative agenda.

But this is where we get to the real truth of the situation: the Republican Party just doesn’t care enough to represent conservatism anymore.: Despite the fact that, just mere months ago, the GOP was reeling from the loss of the presidential election, and over the course of a few weeks the momentum has shifted almost entirely to their favor, yet the big names in Washington seem almost unaware of this.

One thing is for certain: Passing the “Gang of 8” immigration bill would be disastrous both for America from an immigration policy standpoint, and for the Republican Party politically.: From a political standpoint, the last thing any Republican needs to be doing right now is handing President Obama a huge piece of legislation that he can hang his hat on as a major political victory.

Maybe we should wait on impeachment proceedings over these innumerable scandals until they have a better chance of passing through the Senate.: But Republicans need to understand that they still stand on very shaky ground, and setting themselves up for failure in 2014 would be a mistake of epic proportions.